Anacapri: The Dream Review

Summary

Rating:

Overall:Despite outstanding photography, a detailed story line, and moderately good puzzles, the tedium of playing through the extensive environment of the game with insufficient intuitive clues is overwhelming.

Anacapri: The Dream is a first-person adventure game set on
Capri, a small island off the coast of Naples, Italy. Developed by S&G
Software (an independent studio created by Silvio and Gey Sevarese),
Anacapri bears many design similarities to their earlier
game, A Quiet Weekend in Capri. Anacapri contains
more than 8000 beautiful photos of the island of Capri, and provides
an outstanding opportunity to learn the history, literature, and
background of the island of Capri, and about Anacapri in particular
(which comprises the western half of the island), while exploring many
areas of the island. Combining actual historical characters with over
40 fictitious ones, the game brings to light much of the history,
legend, and myth of this romantic location. (Interestingly enough,
today -- as I write this review -- marks the 150th anniversary of the
birth of Dr. Axel Munthe, a Swedish physician who plays an important
role in the game, and in the history of Anacapri.)

Playing the role of a prominent archeologist and expert of ancient
civilizations, you have been asked to come to Anacapri to search for a
mystical artifact -- the "Obsidian Disk" -- an article of power and
danger, reputed to pre-date known civilization. While much is rumored
about this Obsidian Disk, there is very little fact to go on. It is
your goal to locate this artifact... if, indeed, it does exist.

Navigation is simple point-and-click; and on-screen "hints" can be
enabled, to assist the user in determining what paths are available
from any spot. Transitions as you move from scene to scene are
"dissolves" from one photograph to the next, typically 20 or 30 feet
from the previous location. Very few scenes provide any panning
capabilities; and the ones that do use a rather limited mechanism to
accomplish the panning -- arrow buttons at the left, right, top, or
bottom of the screen that must be clicked and held while the scene
shifts. Even so, the panning is rarely more than about 15 degrees in
any direction.

Each individual scene is a highly detailed photograph. While
incredibly beautiful and detailed, this same detail can become a bane
when playing the game. Computer-generated scenes -- even complex ones
-- can use color, contrast, highlighting, and other methods to focus
attention on a desired spot or object. Not so with photo scenes.
Without using the optional hint system, it is virtually impossible to
know what might be important in any of the 8000 scenes that comprise
the game environment, and the level of detail in the photos can turn
any scene into a "hot-spot hunt."

As an enhancement to the digital photographs, there is also some minor
integration of computer-generated artifacts -- e.g., buttons to click,
mailboxes to open, objects to pick up -- into some of the scenes.
Many of the puzzles are computer-generated, and overlaid on the
existing photo, so as to appear to be part of the scene.

Due to the "photo progression" nature of the game, the player may
often move forward 20, 30, or even 40 "clicks" (i.e., scenes) to get
to the next point where there is any action that can be taken. There
were instances where I felt that I was watching someone's vacation
pictures. You know the kind: where the individual -- to insure that
they don't miss a single minute of their vacation -- takes endless
pictures, often of virtually the same thing from minutely different
angles... and then feels that they need to show them all to
you afterwards. Moving through all of those scenes repeatedly got
boring very quickly. A computer-generated game would have rethought
that layout, and simplified it greatly. However, working with the
real landscape of Anacapri, the Savereses did the only thing they
could do -- and "mapped out" every inch of the island in photos,
forcing the player to walk every step of it.

Thankfully, an in-game map with active "touch points" does continue to
develop as one plays the game; however, there is really no indication
of where to go, or what to do. The environment is huge, and most of
the island is available to the user from the outset of the game.
Thus, there is the very likely opportunity to wander aimlessly for
hours and hours.

The soundtrack -- composed by Silvio Savarese -- can be supportive, as
well as confusing and annoying. There are times when "anxious" or
"stressful" music is being played, for example -- yet there is nothing
anxious or stressful going on. And some of the more mundane tracks
are eminently forgettable. I found myself turning the volume down or
completely off on several occasions, just to reduce the annoyance.

There is a lot to read in the game -- almost too much. While much of
it might be considered highly educational, it is also too long. At
times, I found that picking up some document, diary, or book, and
opening it to read through it, resulted in being diverted from the
actual game for lengthy periods of time, reading mostly aimless
letters, dissertations, etc.

Most of the puzzles are fairly straightforward, and can be solved
using clues found in various documents or conversations. The puzzles
are integrated reasonably well into the story line, and don't seem to
be simply gratuitous.

There are many characters to interact with. However, conversations
with the various characters do not employ any video animation.
Rather, these interactions consist of multiple photos of the character
in different positions, with "dissolve" transitions between, as they
talk. These photos often seem "unnatural," though -- as does much of
the dialogue. It was also unnerving to discover that everyone I
encountered a) seemed to know me, and b) knew more about my quest than
I did -- despite the fact that I was a visitor to the island. And
there is an almost unnatural conflict between the seemingly intense
significance of the quest for The Disk, and the nonchalant manner in
which everyone talks about it. The actual quest -- finding The
Obsidian Disk -- is portrayed as a critical task, one that can affect
the fate of the entire civilized world. And yet, in virtually all
conversations with the local townspeople, The Disk is discussed in a
maddeningly "ho-hum" manner, as if it were a subject from the back
page of yesterday's newspaper.

A word must be said about the voice acting, as well. Originally,
Anacapri was developed in Italian. Later, alternate voicing
was dubbed in, for distribution in English-speaking markets.
Apparently the budget for this dubbing was severely limited, however.
From the sound of it, the 40 or more characters encountered in the
game are voiced by about 6 actors, each trying to change their voice
(usually to comical extremes) to play multiple characters. The
results can only be said to bring quite a bit of levity to the game.

There is a fairly robust interweaving of mythology and reality
throughout the story -- even visiting creatures such as the Sirens,
and Poseidon. I had mixed feelings about the implementation of this.
Some of it aids the story; and some of it seems to "get in the way."

I was also confused by some apparent anachronisms within the game --
such as finding a tablet dated from the early 1800's that says "The
Disk is still on the island," and then having this tablet presented as
proof that it still is there today.

When there is a hint given by one of the characters as to where to go
next (e.g., "Go talk with Dr. Munthe"), and you navigate through the
entire town to get to a specific place, you are frequently told
something like "Dr. Munthe's not here; he's gone for a walk." Or
"Sorry, the shop is closed now. Come back after 4pm." Or "There is no
bus here now; come back later." Following in-game clues, only to
arrive at these kinds of results, becomes increasingly frustrating.

To say that Anacapri can provide the player with over 50
hours of game play (a claim made on the game's Web site) is both a
good and a bad thing. Were this truly a challenging game, with
well-thought-out puzzles, intuitive clues, less tedious navigation,
more comfortable (and productive) dialogues, and better character
acting, I'd gladly welcome 50 hours of game play. However,
Anacapri turns that 50 hours (and more) into a chore.

The most common way to play the game is in interactive Adventure mode.
Alternately, an Explore mode opens up all locations in the game,
removes all puzzles (and interacting characters), and allows the
player to just walk around Anacapri, see the sites at a leisurely
pace, and enjoy the thousands of beautiful photographs of the island.
(Not ever having traveled to Capri, I don't know if every day in
Anacapri is like the pictures; but the developers certainly opted to
take their pictures on an incredibly beautiful day.)

Anacapri has a lot to offer -- non-linear exploration in an
environment with a huge "footprint," a combination of legend and
reality, thousands of incredibly beautiful and detailed photographs, a
moderately detailed story line that develops throughout the game, and
a good mix of puzzles. What is missing, however, is something to pull
all of those things together into an enticing, intuitive, challenging
game that doesn't get boring.